1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates in general to the telecommunications field and, in particular, to a system, controller and method capable of alerting a user of a mobile phone that an emergency situation such as a weather alert has been issued for a geographical area currently occupied by that user.
2. Background of the Invention
When it comes to public safety and personal safety, it is always desirable to improve upon the way people are warned about emergency situations including, for example, weather alerts, hostage situations and hazardous material leaks. To date there does not appear to be any system that can effectively warn a person when such an emergency situation occurs in a geographical area currently occupied by that person. For instance, people traditionally have had to watch the local channels on a television or listen to a radio to stay informed about threatening or severe weather conditions in their neighborhood. However, it is not practical to expect that people always watch the television or listen to the radio and as such people run the risk of being surprised by severe weather conditions. Moreover, since local television stations cover local weather conditions, it is possible that a person watching a national cable channel may not be informed about the threatening or severe weather conditions in their neighborhood.
Aural alarms such as sirens are also ineffective warning systems because people often cannot hear them while they are inside a building or while they are watching television, listening to music or sleeping. Moreover, the aural alarms may have different types of sirens to indicate different types of emergencies which can be very confusing in a dangerous way to people. For instance, imagine a family that is awakened in the middle of the night by a siren and wrongly assumes that the siren indicates there is a tornado warning and then seeks shelter in the basement when the siren is really indicating a flash flood warning. Accordingly, there is an existing need for a system, controller and method that can effectively alert people about emergency situations. This need and other needs are satisfied by the system, controller and method of the present invention.
The present invention includes a system, controller and method all of which overcome the aforementioned shortcomings in the state-of-art by effectively alerting a mobile subscriber about an emergency situation including, for example, a weather alert, a hostage situation or a hazardous material leak. In particular, the system includes an emergency warning system capable of generating information identifying a geographic area in which there is an emergency situation. The system also includes a controller capable of receiving the information identifying the troubled geographic area and is further capable of requesting and receiving from a wireless communications network a list of the mobile subscribers currently located within the troubled geographic area. Thereafter, the controller is capable of initiating an emergency notification message that is sent to at least one of the mobile subscribers. The emergency notification message can be in the form of a page, a voice message (first embodiment) or a short text message (second embodiment).